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Breaking News:Bernie Fine fired from Syracuse University

Syracuse (WSYR-TV) - A statement from Syracuse University Sunday night announced Bernie Fine's employment has been terminated.

The statement says "At the direction of Chancellor Cantor, Bernie Fine’s employment with Syracuse University has been terminated, effective immediately."

Syracuse University placed Fine on administrative leave earlier in the month after ESPN aired accusations from two former ball boys, claiming they were molested by Fine in the late 1970s through the 1990s. A third man has also come forward with accusations.

Re: Breaking News:Bernie Fine fired from Syracuse University

I don't think it will matter Kstat. He came out too strong in defense by calling it a money grab.

It still sounds like a money grab. Why in the world do you go to ESPN and not the police if not for money? This whole situation is sketchy, for a number of different reasons. And no, not saying that I think they're false accusations, but there are just somethings that don't seem to be right.

The biggest thing that sticks out, in my mind, is that there's a HUGE difference between a 12y/o boy and a 17y/o young man. I wouldn't think that a pedophile would get his rocks off on a maturing young man, nor would I think a homosexual would get his rocks off on a 12y/o boy. That's a pretty wide range in sexual preference.

And plus, I understand the whole being too ashamed/scared/whatever reason to speak out against someone molesting you, but the half brother that just came out said in his interview with ESPN how he would tell Fine to stop, and ask Fine why he was doing this to him (the accuser). Not only that, you have enough balls, for the lack of a better term, to screw his wife? That's.......pretty strong statements/actions to take against someone molesting you. If you can stand up to your attacker, how can you not tell someone about it? If you can talk about it openly with his wife, how can you not tell anyone else about it?

Just something stinks. I'm not saying they're wrong, or right, in their accustations, but there are some questions that pop out pretty strongly in my mind.

The worst thing Jim is guilty of, so far, is defending his friend from accusations that was already investigated.

Re: Breaking News:Bernie Fine fired from Syracuse University

"The allegations that have come forth today are disturbing and deeply troubling. I am personally very shocked because I have never witnessed any of the activities that have been alleged. I believe the university took the appropriate step tonight. What is most important is that this matter be fully investigated and that anyone with information be supported to come forward so that the truth can be found. I deeply regret any statements I made that might have inhibited that from occurring or been insensitive to victims of abuse."

The issue with Paterno all along was knowing and not doing the right thing. I don't think that Boeheim knew anything about this, and it wasn't until he heard Fine's wife implicate him that he had reason to believe what was apparently going on.

Re: Breaking News:Bernie Fine fired from Syracuse University

And the twists just keep coming.

New evidence in Syracuse sex scandal?

Syracuse, New York (CNN) -- The wife of former Syracuse University assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine will make a statement Tuesday challenging the implications of a tape recording of a 2002 telephone conversation with her husband's accuser that appears to show she knew of alleged sexual abuse of boys, her nephew said Monday.

"She'll even say that's her voice," nephew Matt Govendo said, but that the sections of the tape -- excerpts of which were made public Sunday by the Syracuse-based Post-Standard newspaper and ESPN -- "are all tampered with."

The university fired Fine from his job as an assistant men's basketball coach Sunday night, hours after the Post-Standard and ESPN reported on the phone conversation, which they said former Syracuse ball boy Bobby Davis had recorded between him and the coach's wife.

In the tape, a woman that ESPN, citing experts, identified as Laurie Fine said she knew "everything that went on" with her husband, adding that "he thinks he's above the law."

"Bernie has issues ... and you trusted somebody you shouldn't," the woman said, speaking to Davis.

The woman appears to acknowledge an inappropriate sexual relationship between Davis and Bernie Fine, saying, "It's just wrong and you were a kid." She also said that her husband should "find (himself) a gay boy, get your rocks off."

Govendo told CNN on Monday that Davis had threatened his aunt with the release of 200 minutes of audio recordings because the Fines had cut off support to him "after 15 years of leaching off them, eating their food, living there."

CNN could not locate Davis for comment Monday and it did not appear that he had an attorney. Multiple telephone messages left with Davis' stepbrother Mike Lang, who also has accused Bernie Fine of abuse, were not returned Monday.

In a statement announcing Fine's termination on Sunday, university officials said they were "shaken" by the allegations. Chancellor Nancy Cantor said the school did not know of the recording during a 2005 investigation of Davis' accusations.

"No other witnesses came forward during the university investigation (in 2005), and those who felt they knew Bernie best could not imagine what has unfolded," she said.
Fine had been placed on administrative leave earlier this month, after Davis and Lang accused him of molesting them. In announcing Fine's leave earlier this month, the school noted it had conducted its own investigation in 2005 and was "unable to find any corroboration of the allegations."

Syracuse men's basketball head coach Jim Boeheim said Sunday that he believed "the university took the appropriate step" in firing Fine, his assistant coach the past 35 years.

"The allegations that have come forth today are disturbing and deeply troubling. I am personally very shocked because I have never witnessed any of the activities that have been alleged," said Boeheim, who days earlier said Fine had his "full support." "I deeply regret any statements I made that might have inhibited that from occurring or been insensitive to victims of abuse."
What did Fine's wife know?

According to a transcript of the conversation on the Post-Standard's website, Davis and Laurie Fine talked about how Bernie Fine was angry at Davis for not repaying him $4,000. Davis said that the coach forced him to "grab him" after offering the loan, including at one point saying, "If you want this money, you'll stay right here."
Laurie Fine appears to side with Davis, and against her husband, saying: "Money isn't the issue here. He lured you with the money. See, he knew full well what he was doing."

Davis provided the recording to the Post-Standard soon after it was recorded, but the newspaper then declined to report on it because it couldn't find "witnesses, enough corroborating evidence or a second accuser."

Laurie Fine, at the time suggested to the Post-Standard that Davis had taped her on multiple occasions and edited the recordings to make them appear more inflammatory.

Repeated calls by CNN to Laurie Fine were unanswered Sunday, and no one answered repeated knocks on the door of her house.
Govendo said no one is taking the allegations lightly, but that the the family does not believe them. He says they feel betrayed by Davis and Lang.

Bernie Fine's attorneys, Donald Martin and Karl Sleight, released a statement Sunday -- hours before their client's firing was announced -- declining to comment on the reports.

"Any comment from (Fine) would only invite and perpetuate ancient and suspect claims," the lawyers said. "Mr. Fine remains hopeful of a credible and expeditious review of the relevant issues by law enforcement authorities."

The embattled coach appeared to be getting some support as evidenced by a sign outside his home that read: "We believe in your innocence Bernie. We love you!"
The U.S. Attorney's office in Syracuse is working with Syracuse police and the U.S. Secret Service on the case, John Duncan, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in New York's northern district, said Monday.

The Secret Service is providing expertise related to electronic communications gathered in the investigation, he said.

File cabinets were among the items taken from Fine's home after authorities executed a search warrant there on Friday. Duncan declined to discuss what authorities were looking for.

Davis, a former Syracuse ball boy who is now 39, told ESPN earlier this month that Fine molested him "hundreds of times" over the course of 16 years, starting from when he was in the fifth or sixth grade.

He told university officials six years ago that he informed Syracuse police that he had been "subjected to inappropriate contact by an associate men's basketball coach" during the 1980s and 1990s, according to an earlier statement from university spokesman Kevin C. Quinn.

Police had told Davis years ago that they would not pursue the case because the statute of limitations had expired, Quinn said in a statement.

On Sunday, another man -- Zachary Tomaselli, now 23 -- told CNN that he also was abused by Fine while in a hotel room in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he'd gone to watch a Syracuse game.

The incident happened about a decade ago, when he traveled by himself a few months after he'd met Fine, Tomaselli said.

He claimed that the coach "put his hand down my shorts" as he was watching TV, adding Fine allegedly did so "four or five times."

Tomaselli himself is facing gross sexual assault charges related to a 2009 incident, according to information from the Maine State Bureau of Investigation.

His father, Fred Tomaselli, claimed that while he and his son had sat in "nose-bleed" seats during Syracuse games, they'd never met Fine. Moreover, he said the boy never stayed overnight in a hotel room with Fine, nor had he ever been brought to Pittsburgh or gone to a game there.

The father said that Zachary Tomaselli's allegation is completely "100% false," suggesting that his son needed help and calling him a "master manipulator." The father and son are estranged.

Lang, 45, has also accused Fine of sexual abuse. Lang told ESPN earlier this month that Fine molested him "15 to 20 times," and confirmed the abuse to CNN in a phone interview Sunday.

While he said that he often found himself "pushing (Fine's) hand away," Lang said that his stepbrother suffered much more than he did.

He described Bernie Fine as "like a father figure" to both he and Bobby Davis, noting the two then-teenagers attended Bernie's wedding to Laurie 26 years ago.
Lang said his "hands started shaking" when he heard the apparent voice of Laurie Fine -- as broadcast this weekend on ESPN -- talking to his stepbrother about the alleged abuse.

Thirty minutes after the story broke earlier this fall about former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, who is accused of sexually abusing boys over a span of 14 years, Bobby Davis texted his stepbrother. Lang said the text read: "'This is what happened to me.'"

Lang's accusation, made after the Sandusky scandal broke, kick-started the reopened police investigation November 17.

Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick has harshly criticized Syracuse Police Chief Frank Fowler and Deputy Chief Sean Broton over the handling of a 2002 probe of Fine that began with Davis' allegation.

Fitzpatrick filed subpoenas for records in the 2002 and current investigations that he said he should readily have access to.

A 1967 graduate of Syracuse, where he'd been a student manager for the basketball team, Fine rejoined the program nine years later as an assistant coach under Boeheim.

Prior to his dismissal, he'd been with the Orange ever since -- the longest such streak for an assistant coach in Division I basketball, the school said.

According to his official biography, which was taken down from Syracuse's website on Sunday night, Fine "has been a tremendous advocate for SU alumni who want to play professional basketball" and "an active member of the Syracuse community."
Besides his wife, Laurie, he has a son and two daughters, the profile stated.

CNN's Susan Candiotti and Ross Levitt in New York, and Deborah Feyerick and Sheila Steffen in Syracuse contributed to this report.

So he taped the discussion between himself, and Mrs. Fine in 2002, and then accused him of molestation in 2005? And yet he told the police that 4 different people would corroborate his story, in 2005, and none of the 4 did. Why didn't he give them the audio tapes then?

Seems like the more that comes out just brings more and more questions.

Re: Breaking News:Bernie Fine fired from Syracuse University

KStat, I am only playing devil's advocate here.... but if somebody recorded (say) 20 hours of phone conversations with a person he was sleeping with, PERHAPS he could splice together 5 minutes taken from here or there that totally alter the perception of what the discussion is all about. I doubt that he had that technical ability, however, and an audio expert should be able to tell.

Certainly what I heard on Outside the Lines seemed like a fluid, real, undoctored conversation to me, so in the end Fine is probably guility as can be.

Re: Breaking News:Bernie Fine fired from Syracuse University

That would be fine, if she was saying it wasn't her on the other end of the phone, but she's not claiming that.

She admits it is her. She say's that the tapes have been edited, and that's not how the conversationS went.

Even if they were edited(which I doubt) there are still enough damning sentences in there to prove it is true. You couldn't piece together something that long word by word and still have it flow like that. She didn't know she was being taped so of course she's now saying it's edited. I still thing coach is going to get the axe when this is all said and done.

Re: Breaking News:Bernie Fine fired from Syracuse University

Even if they were edited(which I doubt) there are still enough damning sentences in there to prove it is true. You couldn't piece together something that long word by word and still have it flow like that. She didn't know she was being taped so of course she's now saying it's edited. I still thing coach is going to get the axe when this is all said and done.

You've then got to answer the biggest question about the tape.

Why didn't he give it to the police in 2005, when they first investigated his claims, since the tape was recorded in 2002?

Once again, I'm not saying anyone is right and anyone is wrong, but there are a LOT of questions that need to be answered, and depending on the answers it can go in a number of different directions.

There's too many open ended questions out there to really form an opinion one way or the other, IMHO.

Re: Breaking News:Bernie Fine fired from Syracuse University

With people already super sensitive about the Penn State scandal right now Beoheim's days as coach are numbered. He's as good as gone.

I understand people are sensitive after what happened at Penn State.

These two cases are not alike though. I have not read anything to suggest that Coach Boeheim had the slightest idea to what was going on. If he didn't have any idea then you cannot hold him accountable for what he didn't know.

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Re: Breaking News:Bernie Fine fired from Syracuse University

Is he lying this time too?

Motivated by Kansas' defeat at the hands of Syracuse in 2003's national title game -- stay with me here -- Zach Tomaselli decided he'd try to hurt the program by latching on lie after lie after lie after lie in the case against alleged sexual molester Bernie Fine. According to Tomaselli now -- and it's this time he's telling the truth, just like the last time he was telling the truth -- he made everything up.

Everything about every interaction he had or didn't have with Bernie Fine, it was all cheaply penned fiction. They were all fables of his own mind -- but not of his own doing, he says. Tomaselli and CNY Central's Matt Mulcahy had been swapping emails recently. In them, Tomaselli owns up to the lies.

"It has become a burden of a lie and I am sick of it. Bobby Davis told me what to tell detectives and it pretty much took off from there. The evidence that supports me is just pure luck, not real evidence. I made the ENTIRE thing up. I have never met Bernie in my life."

Hold up. Bobby Davis told Tomaselli what to tell the police?

Is this the truth? Are you lying again, Zach Tomaselli? If not, where are you now, Bobby Davis?

Right here. ESPN's Mark Schwarz, who arranged contact between Tomaselli and Davis (I'll get to that in a minute), swiftly got Davis on the record Friday morning about Tomaselli's latest claims.

"I never said anything like that at all to the kid," Davis told ESPN. "I just spoke to him a couple minutes. There were like two phone calls between us and they lasted a total of three to four minutes.
"It was very short," Davis said of their conversations. "I asked him all the questions. I asked him to describe Bernie's house, to describe the arena, to name the players on the team at that time. He kept changing his story with me. He couldn't name the players, couldn't describe the house. I said, 'You just need to call the police.' I called back and asked him if he called the police and he said, 'no one answered.' I said, "no one answered?'"

Throw another lie on this grease fire of a story/case/ongoing amalgam of a botched and broken narrative against all involved.

And there is another sticky journalistic matter to address here. Consider the normal alternative to this story. There is a likelihood that we never know who Zach Tomaselli is if ESPN doesn't get Bobby Davis and Zach Tomaselli in touch with each other. It was Schwarz who arranged the the confabulation between the two accusers. What was the motivation, or the precedent, for Schwarz to do that? Schwarz injected himself into the story, and from there, according to a liar's liar, Tomaselli, Davis directed the misguided, 23-year-old sociopath from Maine to join the fight against Fine.

"It was a game to me," Tomaselli wrote in an email to CNY Central. "It was fun trying to make this story come alive. I was told by Bobby Davis what kind of porn Bernie likes. So I would add we were watching lesbian porn and going on and on. But obviously, it didn't pan out because of my school records and stuff. I was like, 'Oh, that's a hole I didn't fill.'"

Whoopsie.

Tomaselli's three-year prison sentence for sexually abusing a teen in Maine begins next week. His motivation to get involved in this case stems from charges against him in that case. Though he hasn't admitted it outright, it seems clear: Tomaselli hoped getting involved in the Fine case could garner sympathy from a judge or jury in his own. If he'd been molested before, that could, in his mind, ease the punishment/explain his actions for being the sick, in-desperate-need-of-help human being he's turned into.

What are you thinking now, Jim Boeheim? Let's all take a minute to daydream and try to envision what Boeheim is saying to close friends behind closed doors, off the record. This has officially become one of, if not the most screwed-up stories in the history of college basketball. Tomaselli makes up lie after lie -- turning a state case into a federal one in the process, oh by the way -- and helped catalyze a change in Syracuse's legacy forever.

None of this exonerates Fine, by the way. The tape of his wife's phone call to Davis can't be forgotten, as those tapes are now the most damning, singular evidence against his behavior. Davis' credibility remains in limbo, with the tapes being the only thing that's keeping him from being put into the same category as Tomaselli and that random, fly-by-night fourth accuser, Floyd VanHooser. He said Fine molested him. He lied about it. You may have forgotten about him. I can't blame you if you did. I've said it all along: on the heels of the Penn State story, this has been completely unpredictable and ever-turning.

Even now, the story has unbelievable life and twists that make you shake your head, not because you don't believe it, but because the totality of the story seemed amiss from the start.